Healer, rebel, tribal leader: Meet the artists at this Miami residency for BIPOC mothers
by Amanda Rosa
Going to an artist residency didn’t seem possible for Shizu Saldamando, a busy artist and mother from Los Angeles. But that changed when she heard of a residency in Miami organized by local nonprofit Fountainhead Arts. Each month, Fountainhead hosts a new small group of artists at a house in the Morningside neighborhood to work on their art, experience Miami and network with the city’s art scene. The program hosts artists based on a new theme every month. In May, the residency hosted couples who are artists. The theme for June caught Saldamando’s eye: BIPOC mothers. “The description for this one seemed perfect because I’d be with other mothers that get it, that have very strong critical art practices and who are dedicated to their craft,” Saldamando said. “But also, dedicated to being mothers, too.”
Saldamando joined two other artists, Natalie Ball and Angela Davis Johnson, to create art in a time when motherhood and women’s rights are at the forefront of public discourse. The country awaits a Supreme Court decision that may rescind Roe v. Wade. States like Texas and Florida have tightened abortion access. Parents have been struggling to find baby formula. And now there’s even a tampon shortage. Among these artists are a healer, a rebel and a tribal council member. Though they have different practices and come from different places, their artwork focuses on communities of color, heritage and family. Since arriving in Miami, they have bonded over air boat rides in the Everglades, trips to museums and homemade meals at the residency. Today’s top headlines Sign up for the Afternoon Update and get the day’s biggest stories in your inbox.
“This is all about mothers of color really taking time for themselves to put themselves first when so often mamas put themselves second,” said Kathryn Mikesell, the Fountainhead co-founder. The thematic residency, where the artists have something in common, gives them the opportunity to “be surrounded by people that understand them completely and fully.” At the end of each month, Fountainhead hosts an open house for the public to meet the artists at the residency. This month’s open house is Saturday. Saldamando, Ball and Johnson agreed that found much more than a relaxing space to work and network. They found friendship.
BIRTHING STORIES AND CHOICES
Angela Davis Johnson comes from a long line of healers and midwives, a tradition she taps into for her work. Though she was born in Orlando, she claims several cities as home, like Atlanta and Philadelphia. While in Miami, she had been thinking about Black maternal health and decisions about giving birth. She occupied the residency’s front living room as her studio and tacked her colorful artworks to the walls. The pieces were deeply rich, both in color and history. “I believe in tapping into the times that we’re in and allowing it to reflect in the work,” she said. Today, disparities in maternal healthcare disproportionately impact Black Americans. Black women in the U.S. have less access to birth control and prenatal care and are more likely to die of pregnancy-related complications than white women. Before modern-day gynecology, African American ancestors relied on midwives to help deliver babies and used natural ingredients to abort unwanted pregnancies, Davis Johnson said. She pointed to a large, abstract collage she made. It depicts a woman holding her womb. A small woven medicine pouch dangles next to her. Inside the womb are old texts describing medicinal plants, like catnip and black cohosh. “It’s also thinking about how, in our birthing stories, we may not be able to have choices about how we want to have our babies, how we want to bring them into the world or where they want to be,” she said. “Creating these landscapes of different information that trouble and also inspire is definitely a part of my practice and my work.”
For Davis Johnson, a mother of two, the residency was her “reemergence.” After taking time to rest during the pandemic, the Fountainhead residency was the perfect opportunity to experiment artistically and forge a strong bond with her fellow artists. “The connection and the relationships that are built during this time is the thing that I was looking forward to most,” Davis Johnson said. “And that’s what I found.” “
“AGENTS OF OUR OWN AUTONOMY”
Shizu Saldamando finds inspiration in the punk rock parties, bars and backyard get-togethers of California. She grew up in San Francisco’s Mission district with her Chicano father and Japanese-American mother. Today, she’s a Los Angeles-based figurative artist who creates detailed portraits of friends, family and strangers on wood, paper and bedsheets. The subjects of her portraits line their eyes with heavy black eyeliner, wear Ramones band shirts and pout their lips when they pose. “We exist not just as victims, but as powerful agents of our own autonomy. To have autonomy over ourselves and our bodies,” she said, referring to people from marginalized communities who are underrepresented in fine art. “That’s where the portrait comes out of.”
But not everyone understood where she was coming from. In the early 2000s, when Saldamando was in graduate school, her white classmates said her portraits, which were exclusively of people of color, were problematic. Maybe she should draw more white people, she recalled them suggesting. Her response was her thesis project. She asked people of color to look at her as if they were looking at a piece of art at a gallery. She drew their inquisitive facial expressions onto stretched canvases “to return the gaze.” “It’s to call attention to the inherent notion that somehow only white people were the purveyors and surveyors of culture and art,” she said.
As she dabbled in embroidery and painting on scrap wood, Saldamando said she found support among Ball and Davis Johnson. They all just “get” each other, she said. While sitting on the couch with Ball and Davis Johnson, Saldamando opened up about her own abortion last year. When she learned she was pregnant, the pandemic was in full swing, her anxiety was high and her toddler needed her undivided attention. She knew what the right decision for her was, she said, and she went to Planned Parenthood. “To have autonomy over my own body and psyche was something really important to me,” she said. Had it not been for her decision, Saldamando said she wouldn’t be here making art in Miami.
“SOMEONE WHO FOUGHT”
Natalie Ball is a Black and indigenous multimedia artist from Oregon who pulls inspiration from her heritage and tribal history. She’s a mother of three, she hunts, she gathers and she uses her art as a form of activism for her community. Ball is also a newly elected tribal council member for the Klamath Tribes. And she wants their land back. “It’s wartime back home,” she said. “And I don’t say that lightly.” Ball was referring to a bitter, tense and sometimes violent dispute over water between the Klamath Tribes and the white residents of a nearby town. Climate change, severe drought and wildfires have only made the situation worse. Racist discrimination and intimidation have escalated, too, Ball said. White store owners have refused to ring her up, trucks with American flags whip around her house and she gets veiled threats for wearing a T-shirt that says “Save the c’waam,” an endangered variety of suckerfish that is sacred to the Klamath.
Lately, the tribes have begun the process to sue the Biden administration over treaty violations, she said. “We’re making moves that hadn’t been done before to protect our water,” she said. “In history, my name will be listed as someone who fought for their territory, who fought for their babies.”
For Ball, her advocacy is part of her responsibility as a mother looking out for her children. That sentiment is reflected in the art work she created in while in Miami. Ball has been working on her “Deer Woman” series, which represents her life as an indigenous woman, from enrolling as a card-carrying tribe member to joining tribal council as an elected official. But her time at the Fountainhead residency was cut short, though she’ll be back in time for the open house. Ball and her work flew to New York City to set up her new exhibition “Shed a Tear, Running Deer.” Saldamando and Davis Johnson plan to visit.
IF YOU GO What: Fountainhead Residency Open House
When: 7- 8:30 p.m. Saturday, June 25
Where: The Fountainhead Residency. 690 Northeast 56th Street
RSVP: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/fountainhead-residency-open-house-june-tickets-332840905107?aff=ebdsoporgprofile T
his story was produced with financial support from The Pérez Family Foundation, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The Miami Herald maintains full editorial control of this work.
Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/visual-arts/article262705577.html#storylink=cpy
